Um, hate to go with the flow, but yeah. She jumped from what looked like at least 100 metres in the air. It's kinda hard to judge the scale of things though when she seems to be like a tenth the size of the ship.

I guess she could have survived because of breaking her fall on the soldier. :/

-opens Survivors thread--sees about 20 paragraphs of feedback-Holy crap guys. All I had to do was kill off half the cast. XD

Alright, this is gonna sound really nasty but I wan't you to know that this is still a really great strip, and I hope this is all constructive. Ahem...

StopKILLINGCHARACTERSI'm really with Jase here. I honestly hated that last part.I understand you need to kill off some people to give the surviving characters more motivation and make the villains seem more, well, villainous, but WOW. That just seemed like overkill, Elder was just because he had a somewhat heroic death, by slowing down M-Strain dude, but Vel? VEL? You kill off you comic relief character because two athletic and trained people can't lift a metal door?! And then hew blows himself up! this would have worked better if he had actually HURT the zombie guy, Sanders I think he's called, but no! He blows himself up and Sanders just sort of stands up and walks away. ALL of these deaths would have been better if they had just DONE something. Neither of them had to kill Sanders, they just had to wound him, dent his armor, give everyone a clue on how they could beat him other than slowing him down for five seconds. Elders death would be a lot more heroic if him being turned into this monster but still being intelligent enough to help his friends actually meant something! If this showed the M-Strain didn't work properly, it would be cool. If he beat Sanders back and then the team had to deal with finding a cure, that would be cool. If it became an inner thing, where he tried to control himself so he wouldn't hurt his friends, that would be cool.But nope. You just kill three and probably two more of the best loved characters of this strip with some bland, boring zombie guy who is indestructable for, as far as I can tell, no reason.

His name is Keyes. Although if memory serves me right, Sanders and Keyes are both characters in the Halo universe, so that might be where you're getting mixed up. If not, there's also an Anders in the comic...

And Elder's 'helping' the others after being zombified was more kind of 'GRAAAGH NEED TO KILL STUFF! OH LOOK. SOMETHING SHINY TO KILL!' -attacks Keyes- rather than him actually wanting revenge or anything.

Keyes has mutagen-induced super-strength, allowing him to wear what is pretty much the heaviest suit of armour in the comic. He's not brainless at all, in fact he's supposed to be intelligent. He's just crazy and psychopathic alongside the intelligence, and he allows his rage to take over most of the time.

The main reason I got from it was to show just how dangerous that guy is. The entire point of killing those characters off was to make him even scarier than he at first seemed - you can't stop him! If they'd sacrificed themselves and maybe wounded him a bit, it'd make him seem like a challenge that can be overcome; this way, the reader knows he's dangerous and they're not even sure if he can be stopped. And so does Jess, who's sure as heck going to let her pals know that there's an indestructable monster after them.

Sure, characters dying is sad, especially when they're such well-rounded, interesting characters, but to me it reinforces a side to this comic that's been hinted at rather than put bluntly. So far, it's been a sort of post-apoc comedy, where people die but they're bad guys and faceless mooks. Now we've been shown that this world's serious and it's dangerous. We've seen the darker side of this comic, and that's what this last part was all about - hammering home that this isn't all going to be smiles and laughs. Bad things happen to good people, and that's something the characters - and us as readers - have to live with.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

My problem is twofold. First, it felt very contrived-why not let somebody like Vel escape instead of the lead female escaping? It was obvious she was never in any danger, like watching an episode of Stargate or Star trek, but restricted to that one character (because stargate would never kill off that many main characters in an entire series). It also felt formulaic, they all died to save Jess going "hey run off, I'll do some pointless distraction that achieves nothing." Elder's death was actually the best in my opinion, and I had no problem with it, even though he was my favourite of the dead characters, because it felt like it had a point, and the whole "get out of here" line works the first time. After that though, Vel's death was completely needless and contrived. I can also understand Sonny's "death," but again it was the same line. 3 times was just too much, imo.

And the other problem is just that I hate the villain, but not in a "love to hate" way, more of a "hate because I think they're stupid," and not just because he's a zombie. I don't think showing a sign of weakness is a problem, surely if the villain is badass enough to keep killing people whilst bleeding profusely or with a crack in his visor or something, surely that would make them more threatening because it's shows just how much it will take to stop him, that it'll literally keep fighting until it drops dead.

As a whole, though, I just don't understand the villain. Why reincarnate one of the average Joe mercs as some kind of invincible zombie and make him the main villain? I could at least accept the villain if it was a re-incarnated character I actually thought was relevant, maybe Ryan.

I don't want to sound like a whiner, you can't complain all that much about free entertainment, especially given the high quality. I think the part's just one of those that's going to divide opinion without much middle ground, and I'll admit I'd prefer this to no characters death due to magic plot armour. I hope that didn't sound too negative, because I do still really like this comic, and I'm sure one part that I don't like with my peculiar taste isn't going to change that. Btw ,I appreciate you taking risks like that with the writing, it certainly keeps things interesting.

In retrospect I did make the whole thing a bit repetitive. Oh well. Learning from mistakes yadda yadda.

And Keyes wasn't exactly just an average joe merc. He was left in the dust by Ryan to die. So he has revenge issues, which he has -technically- fulfilled.

I think part of what sold me on the last part (in spite of my jokes about how cruel Forty-K's gotten ) was that it defied expectations. While maybe you could see it as repetitive, since admittedly it was a lot of noble, sacrificial deaths in a row, I think it worked precisely because you kept thinking that at some point, the absolute disaster that was unfolding would slow to a halt. Instead, it just kept coming.

And as for Keyes, I don't think he's a poor villain because he's not really intended to function as the Big Bad. Ultimately, Chief Inspector Byrd is still in charge and pulling the strings, and Keyes is just his puppet. So really, it's not like he has to be an intelligent villain, because there's already his evil genius boss in the mix, not to mention Byrd's ultra-mysterious higher-ups, who we still haven't seen yet. Keyes' job is to be the brute force, a role that as of yet Team Evil doesn't have. Byrd breaks down the heroes' spirits, while Keyes breaks down their bodies.

I will, however, make the concession that I probably would've spared Sonny. I think Meight's "Out With A Bang" plan probably would've been good enough to serve as a distraction for both Sonny and Jess to make it out of the base. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that he died because Mr. K couldn't quite come up with a way to fit the both of them comfortably onto a motorcycle.

>.> What's this about motorcycles? Um... I have to confess, there -were- two bikes in the garage. One was taken by Chad but then returned in the assault on the base after he ditched it to escape after they withdrew. So there should have been two but I seemed to have... misplaced one. Nonetheless, the plan was always for Sonny to distract Keyes while Jess got away.

-sigh- The restrictions of Lego.

*le me, mulling about, forgiving myself for not posting a reply since my appendix just burst...

WHAT? *Double-take* I, sir, said nothing about hating this comic one bit. I haven't said anything at all, actually...

Edit: Oh, and I was thinking the same thing about the motorcycle's max cap, JL.

Dude, your appendix burst? Get well soon!

You guys can seriously see right through my reasons for stuff happening in the comic. i.e. Two minifigs can't comfortably fit on one of those bikes. >.>

Anyway, I've filmed part of the next bit, but I was interrupted before I could finish so hopefully I can complete filming tomorrow. I've started relying less on scripts now, and just using them as guidelines for the moment. So my dialogue is more improvised when I edit, rather than being set in stone by a script. It also allows me to add more to the comic in the editing phase, and I've started to take a few spare shots of each character for each scene in case I want to add more dialogue, either that or just repeat shots. There's a few shots I've already repeated for the keen-eyed reader.

There's a lot more talking and the introduction of a few more characters to come, so don't anything quite as exciting as the last part just yet.